A once generic shipping container now boasts two examination rooms, a pharmacy, and an office.

Students from Bridgewater-Raritan Regional High School transformed a cargo shipping container into a fully functional medical clinic to be donated to a village in Pader, Uganda.

Students from Bridgewater-Raritan Regional High School transformed a cargo shipping container into a fully functional medical clinic to be donated to a village in Pader, Uganda.

Where can you find enough ribbon to wrap a four-ton gift box? That’s the question that has over 150 high school students and their teachers scratching their heads. However, bedecked or not, on August 4, 2012, a high cube cargo shipping container leaves the Bridgewater-Raritan Regional High School campus for its voyage to a destitute village in Pader, Uganda.

For the better part of the school year, students have reconfigured a high-cube cargo container that is 40-feet by 8-feet by 8-feet into a fully functional medical clinic. Students spent hundreds of hours designing and installing an electrical system, a zero-gravity plumbing system and honing their carpentry skills transforming the interior of a corrugated steel container into a lifesaving facility. A once generic shipping container now boasts two examination rooms, a pharmacy, and an office.

In addition, hundreds of students throughout the district and community businesses alike donated items like garden and building tools, shoes, books, educational materials, medical supplies and nonperishable food to be packed inside the container. These items will provide direct short-term aid to Pader’s orphans, as well as furnish much needed supplies for the staff operating the medical facility.

Once the container reaches its final destination, it will be met by a team of doctors and volunteers already stationed in Pader, Uganda. The team will cut out pre-drawn window and door holes and install high-grade donated windows and doors putting the finishing touches on the fully-functional medical clinic.

Art teacher Jason Draine spearheaded the effort to create Uganda’s first public art installation. “Turning the container into an aquatic seascape has been a life changing experience for me and my students,” Draine said. “Through this mural project, students gave more of themselves than I’ve witnessed before. They asked thoughtful questions about the village and the orphanage. They truly wanted to give those kids a view of the world (the ocean) that they would probably never see. The mural helped them connect to kids they will never meet.”

“See the Difference One Container Can Make” is an edu-service project that is designed to immerse students in engaged learning and to promote civic engagement. In partnership with the non-profit, Homes of Living Hope, the high school has created a project that has never been implemented in any school in the nation.

For more information about the project or to schedule a tour of the container, contact Len Herman at 908-231-8660, ext. 2263 or lherman@brrsd.k12.nj.us.